MY ANGELINE

Notes:A song not related to the Middle East, but set in an operetta about the Nile.

Lyrics:

She kept her secret well, oh yes,
Her hideous secret well.
We were wedded fast, I knew naught of her past:
For how was I to tell?
I married her, guileless lamb I was,
I’d have died for her sweet sake.
How could I have known that my Angeline
Had been a “human snake?”

We’d only been wed a week or two,
When I found her quite a wreck,
Her limbs were tied in a true lovers knot
At the back of her swanlike neck.
No curse there sprang to my pallid lips
Nor did I reproach her then;
I calmly untied my lovely bride
And straightened her out again.

At night I’d awake at midnight’s hour
With a creepy, crawly feeling,
And there she would be in her white robe de nuit
A walking on the ceiling.
She said that she was the “human fly”
And she lifted me from beneath
By a section slight of my garb of night
Which she held in her pearly teeth.

Oh, for the sweet sake of the “human snake”
I’d have stood this conduct shady,
But she skipp’d at last with a gentleman friend
Who had starr’d as the bearded lady.

But oh, at night when my slumber’s light
Regret cometh o’er me stealing,
Oh, where are those limbs that tied four-in-hand scarf?
How I miss those steps on the ceiling.